The Play is the Thing

In the play,which is set against the backdrop of the performing tradition of nautanki,in which men adorn a female persona,Ranajit plays the role of an accomplished male actor,in a tussle with an aspiring woman who is set to step into his space.

“The initial idea was to make it an actors’ play,with the performance style of a nautanki,including music and dance. Roop Aroop presents many interpretations,including women reclaiming their space,the impermanence of things,the fear of losing one’s place and the constant battle between the past and present,” says Sharma,adding that thespians and actors are now finding their own language to devise and discover their own productions with texts adapted from short stories and others from varied experiences. “At the National School of Drama,we are encouraging such plays,which are devised by working together,reflect on contemporary issues,transcend boundaries of language and encourage interaction with the audience,’’ says Sharma.

Ranajit agrees. He notes that the process of creating a script with the cast,revisiting it and seeing it evolve by working on various texts delivers new insights into the process of writing a script and tackling the theme with a fresh perspective.

“Performance texts” is how actor,dancer,director and stand-up comedian Maya Krishna Rao chooses to describe acts that are created out of a new piece,a song,personal experiences or pure imagination of actors and directors. For someone who calls herself a self-dependent actor,creating these texts is essential. “That time has gone when we expected playwrights to be locked in a room and come out with a perfect script. Young actors,directors and writers are devising their own scripts and developing the core idea further,’’ reflects Rao,in Chandigarh to stage Quality Street. Rao elaborates how various influences of music,sound,video and dance are integral to this performance text. Creating solo performances in a matter of hours,Rao says that the morning newspapers,politics,events and ridiculous situations in everyday life serve as an inspiration for her plays.

The Writers’ Bloc is an organisation that promotes new writing for theatre and encourages playwrights to pen scripts that talk of contemporary issues in Hindi and English. Actor and director Rajit Kapoor,who was in the city with Rage Productions’ One On One,shares how the effort has yielded thought-provoking texts. Paul Smith,the inspirational head of the British Council,Mumbai,says Kapoor,provided a lifeline by suggesting that playwrights in India could benefit from some training. He then brought in the Royal Court Theatre,Britain’s home of new writing,to be the guide. This led to the first residential workshop near Nasik,where fledgling playwrights from across India worked intensely with the Royal Court Theatre and produced nine original scripts. As a result,India’s first festival of original Indian playwriting was born.

Over the last few years,Rage has supported 20 young playwrights and produced 20 new scripts. If Akash Mohimen’s Mahua is a play that is based on a tribal village that is being displaced by machines,Abhishek Majumdar’s The Djinns of Eidgah is the story of two children stranded in the tragic impasse of Kashmir and Jaal is a collaboration between director Faezeh Jalali and playwright Annie Zaidi. “We want to put the writer on a pedestal and celebrate writing,’’ says Kapoor.

Having created a completely new genre of modern Indian theatre called ‘Kahaani Ka Rangmanch’,Devendra Raj Ankur shares how the text of many of his productions emerge from theatre workshops,discussions and theatre exercises. “A memorable one is a play that emerged when we worked and lived with dwarfs to understand their problems and insecurities,” he says. With installations,video,film clips,photography,sound engineering becoming an integral part of theatre,new scripts are emerging. “One has to break the mould to create something new for a new audience,” concludes Ankur.